- Lea Daan was a Belgian dancer, choreographer and pedagogue.
- She took piano and singing lessons at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp and studied architecture and plastic arts.
- She taught movement theory at the Studio Herman Teirlinck and the Royal Conservatories of Antwerp and Ghent.
- Her parents were West Flemings who had fled to Antwerp.
- She was the pioneer of Flemish modern dance and popularized the dance that had been quite elitist until then.
- In 1928 Daan moved to Germany and took lessons in ballet, expression dance and theater with Kurt Jooss in Essen (where she met Elsa Darciel), space and expression theory with Rudolf von Laban in Berlin and movement choirs and Laban notation with Albrecht Knust in Hamburg.
- In 1931 she opened her own school on the Frankrijkei (Antwerp) where she trained dancers to become pedagogues. Her most famous student was Jeanne Brabants. The school continued to exist until the 1980s.
- In 1931 she graduated in dance pedagogy and was allowed to teach the dance teachings of Laban, the so-called Central European Dance School.
- In 1926 she followed the Art Dance course at the Free Academy founded by Roger Avermaete with Francesca d'Aler, principal dancer of the ballet company of the Royal Flemish Opera. She then followed ballet in Brussels.
- She gave her first solo performance in 1930 in her hometown and on that occasion she adopted the Flemish-sounding stage name Lea Daan.
- Daan also choreographed open-air games, movement choirs, school parties, balls and monumental processions such as the Procession of the Holy Blood in Bruges.
- From 1946 to 1972 she taught movement theory at the Studio Herman Teirlinck.
- She assisted several directors for productions of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Schouwburg in Antwerp (Midsummernachtsdroom = A Midsummer Night's Dream and De Knecht van Twee Meesters = The Servant of Two Masters ), the Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg and the Koninklijk Parktheater in Brussels and also Nederlands Toneel Gent.
- From 1947, the shining period of the and her dance company, which then consisted of 30 members, began. Until 1953, the Dansgroep Lea Daan took part in the National Dance Festivals organized by De Vrienden van de Dans, of which Roger Avermaete was chairman. In 1947, the dance group is the first group to work with an orchestra during the festivals.
- From 1973 she was in charge as choreographer of the actors of the "Haagse Comedie" in The Hague (Netherlands).
- Important creations of her and her dance group were Dulle Griet (1950), a narrative ballet in six scenes after a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Jeanne d'Arc (1956), a dance drama in eight scenes, in which Lea Daan played the lead role herself. In 1956 the dance group was disbanded.
- From 1935 to 1940 she gave two daily gymnastics lessons on the radio for the NIR, and after that she taught movement theory at the secondary school Heilig Graf in Turnhout.
- In 1949, Les ancêtres was performed with a number of students from the Studio of the National Theater where she had started teaching in 1946: Dora van der Groen, Jef Burm and Ward De Ravet.
- In 1936 her dance group took part in the Internationale Tanzwettspiele associated with the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. The performance was controversial and Daan would later be accused of being German.
- From 1948 she also taught movement theory at the Royal Conservatories of Antwerp (until 1979) and Ghent (until 1973).
- In 1937 the dance group of Lea Daan took part in the Antwerp 1937 art event with three different performances in which the scenario came first and then the music. The decors were designed and painted by René Guiette.
- The dance group Lea Daan was the first dance group to introduce the movement theory of the Central European School of Laban in Belgium.
- In 1933, the dance group Lea Daan emerged from the Antwerp dance school.
- From 1935 onwards, the dance group Lea Daan performed regularly in popular houses, at festivals and political manifestations. Flemish popular themes as well as epic themes were interpreted.
- In 1939, the dance group of Lea Daan won second prize at the International Dance Competition of the Center for Fine Arts in Brussels. Jeanne Brabants, who had meanwhile converted to classical ballet, left the group in 1941 and Karin Gross, Daan's Jewish assistant, lived in hiding during the Second World War, so that the activities of the dance group came to a standstill.
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